Tag: Happiness

A study by Harvard psychologists show that people are happiest when they are living “in the moment” and focusing on the task at hand, and that daydreaming and thinking about the future or the past reduces happiness.

What is happiness? How does one get a grip on this most elusive, intractable and perhaps unanswerable of questions?

Sam Harris speaks about the rational basis for morality at the 2008 Beyond Belief conference at the Salk Institute.  He argues that science should not cede the territory of morals and values to religion.  He predicts that just as religion used to be the authority on medicine, science, and physics before science pushed it aside, religion’s monopoly on ethics will also get pushed aside as science makes progress on questions of morality.  This lecture is intellectually very significant because it attacks the prevailing “non-overlapping magistera” split between science and religion.

A long-running longitudinal study of Harvard College students that started in the 1930’s may begin to shed light on what factors are more conducive to happiness.  An example of scientific inquiry being used to examine issues that have traditionally been the domain of religion.